Data Journeys: Capturing the socio-material constitution of data objects and flows Jo Bates Information school University of Sheffield 1

Data Journeys: motivations 2012/13 Data Hype: Big data, open data, data = oil…. A lot of the discourse - celebratory, not very critical – notable exceptions e.g. Gitelman, Bowker “Raw Data is an Oxymoron” Data Journeys How to make sense of… …. the diverse and complex socio-material forces that shape how data objects are produced and how they move between different sites of practice, and …. the ways in which data flows across space and time bring people & objects into new forms of relation with one another.

The Secret Life of a Weather Datum AHRC funded project (Jan 2014 – March 2015) – Jo Bates and Paula Goodale (Sheffield) & Yuwei Lin (University for the Creative Arts) Piloted “data journeys” methodology to explore socio-material life of data objects/flows Research Questions: The ‘journey’ of weather data from production to re-use as ‘big’ weather data in science & markets Socio-cultural values and practices shaping, and being shaped by, production, distribution and (re)use of data over course of journey Institutional and government policies and legislation shaping distribution of data Communicating complexity of these socio- material dynamics to a wider audience. 3

Initial design for interactive website Following the data Researcher journeys with the data – a traveller through the infrastructure. RQ1: Mapping the journey of the data Identifying what data to follow Mapping data flows & sites of practice Identifying sites for data collection Iterative process Initial design for interactive website 4

RQ2: Socio-cultural values & practices RQ3: Policy & legislation At each ‘station’ - interviews, observations, documents. Thematic analysis. 4 cases: local weather stations (purple), citizen science/amateur observation (blue), climate science (red), financial markets (green) UK Met Office as a central site of practice 5

Visualisation of research design Embedded research data – rich, transparent, bring the social alive Emphasis on people, culture, stories, relations Space open for public discussion

Data Journeys: key insights Relations between people – space & time Friction in data movement Socio-material constitution of digital data objects Data objects as mutable mobiles Bates, J., Lin, Y, and Goodale, P. (2016). Data Journeys: Capturing the socio-material constitution of data objects and flows. Big Data and Society. 3(2).

Data Journeys: key insights Data journeys bring people into new & different relations with one another ‘Local’ actors <-> big data-driven global markets & climate science Affective dynamics holding the ‘assemblage’ of actors together Relations between people – space & time Friction in data movement Socio-material constitution of digital data objects Data objects as mutable mobiles Social relations across time Inter-generational connections – sailors, archivists, previous generations of curators

Data Journeys: key insights Frictions in the circulation of data objects E.g. Archived ship log books to global climate science database Neoliberal funding and policy constraints, archival practices, socio-technical complexity Flexibility & adaptation: voluntary labour (citizen science), informal/horizontal/ entrepreneurial culture (ACRE) Bates, J. (2017) The Politics of Data Friction. Journal of Documentation. Bates, J., Goodale, P. and Andrews, P. (forthcoming) Assembling an infrastructure for meteorological data recovery. Relations between people – space & time Friction in data movement Socio-material constitution of digital data objects Data objects as mutable mobiles

Jo Bates @j0bates Information School, University of Sheffield 10